Specially designed and configured inflatable air mattresses for providing a comfortable and healthy resting or sleeping environment for pregnant women have a long history of development. As is well known, as a pregnancy progresses a woman's ability to find a comfortable resting position on conventional mattresses decreases significantly. In past years, this has led to the development of many types of mattresses having a suitably located central cavity to accommodate the distended abdomen. However, the degree and orientation of abdomen expansion changes dramatically over time, and a mattress with a more or less static cavity size, or other fixed attributes, cannot provide the needed comfort and other health benefits for the full range of fetus development.
In recent years, air mattresses of various types have been proposed, some of which have moved the pregnancy mattress art in useful directions. The basic ability of a variably inflatable air mattress does allow for a certain amount of dynamic accommodation over time.
Descriptions of typical prior art approaches to air mattresses for pregnant women may be found in a number of U.S. patents, and particular attention is now being addressed to the feature of adjustability of their abdomen receiving cavities.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,237,712 to Ramsay teaches the use of three separately inflatable rings in a maternity mattress to provide adjustable support for a pregnant woman's abdomen. This is done by adjusting the degree of inflation of one or more of the ring-shaped chambers which are permanently fixed in position and are concentrically disposed.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,185,897 to Van Laanen shows a centrally disposed cylindrical cavity extending through a maternity mattress wherein pressurized air is supplied to a chamber formed between top and bottom flexible panels to provide adjustable depth of the cavity.
Beyond the purely maternity mattress teachings, a number of other U.S. patents are also of interest. U.S. Pat. No. 3,606,623 to Aymar discloses the use of air filled bellows sections to adjustably position patients' bodies on beds.
Other U.S. patents of interest in the present context are: U.S. Pat. No. 6,568,015 to Allen; U.S. Pat. No. 5,425,147 to Supplee et al.; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,244,452 to Vaccaro et al.
While each of these prior art teachings appears to be addressing selected aspects of providing an ideal resting or sleeping medium for pregnant women—or indeed for persons in general or obese or infirm persons—they have not addressed the full range of attributes needed to optimize a pregnant user's selection of womb well size and firmness. It is exactly this long felt need that the present invention admirably meets via its uniquely configured bellows system allowing for the first time a smooth, finely adjustable and user selectable establishment of optimal womb well size and firmness.